Robert Bentley was an English

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 botanist

Botany

Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...

. He is perhaps best remembered today for the four-volume Medicinal Plants, published in 1880 with Henry Trimen and containing over three hundred hand-colored plates by botanist David Blair.

Life

Robert Bentley was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire in 1821. While apprenticed to a pharmacist in Tunbridge Wells, he developed an interest in botany. He subsequently studied medicine at King's College London

King's College London

King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

, and became a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons

Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons

MRCS is a professional qualification for surgeons in the UK and IrelandIt means Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. In the United Kingdom, doctors who gain this qualification traditionally no longer use the title 'Dr' but start to use the title 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss' or 'Ms'.There are 4 surgical...

 in 1847 and a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1849.

Bentley served as botany lecturer at the Medical School of the London Hospital, and in 1859 became Professor of Botany at King's College London

King's College London

King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

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In 1874, Bentley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain

Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was formerly the statutory regulatory and professional body for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in England, Scotland and Wales...

, and he served as joint editor of the British Pharmacopeia of 1885.

He died in 1893 and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in Kensal Green, in the west of London, England. It was immortalised in the lines of G. K. Chesterton's poem The Rolling English Road from his book The Flying Inn: "For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of...

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Books by Bentley

• A Manual of Botany: including the structure, functions, classification, properties, and uses of plants, etc. (1861), at Google Books
• Characters, Properties, and Uses of Eucalyptus (1874)
• Botany (1875, London)
• Medicinal Plants: being descriptions with original figures of the principal plants employed in medicine and an account of the characters, properties, and uses of their parts and products of medicinal value - written with Henry Trimen (1880, London, Churchill)
• The Student’s Guide to Structural, Morphological, and Physiological Botany (1883, London)
• A Text-book of Organic Materia Medica, comprising a description of the vegetable and animal drugs of the British Pharmacopoeia, with other non-official medicines, etc. (1887)

Further reading

• The Annual Register (1894, Longmans, Green, and Company, London, p. 212)
• Obituary with biographical details in the Dictionary of National Biography (1901, Macmillan, New York, pages 181-182)